by Allison Lane
He groaned.
But that didn’t make sense either. She couldn’t hate him. Memory of how she’d arched into his kiss tightened his groin. She could not have responded that way if she hated him, so it must have been revenge. How long would she have let him suffer before she revealed the truth? Until just before the money went to charity? A lifetime?
Perhaps his original impression was true. Lady Lanyard had known Harriet’s true identity. She had written her will to tie him to a chimera, raising his hopes when there was no chance of success. As further retaliation, she had directed him to seek out Melissa. They could have plotted the ultimate punishment: make him fall in love before casting him brutally aside.
No!
He groaned again. It could not be. Whatever Lady Lanyard’s motives, he could not believe that Melissa was that venal. And who would expect Harriet to grow into so stunning a woman? It would not fadge.
And so he was back to her deceit.
He paced angrily about the tiny room, smacking his fists on walls and tables as wave after wave of fury swept him. She had lied from the moment they met, claiming a false name and inventing a false background. And she’d had help. The woman who had posed as her aunt had also lied. And who was that maid? It certainly wasn’t Willis.
Embarrassment increased his fury. In retrospect, it seemed incredible that he had not seen through her deception. There had always been a strong sense of familiarity about her, starting with her appearance, like seeing his grandmother’s portrait come alive. And that was more true than he had ever admitted. Chagrined, he poured a glass of port and stared at himself in the mirror.
Was he stupid, or merely credulous? He had been bewitched since the first day he had seen her – he downed the wine as a wave of longing broke over him. Did he really believe that she was the embodiment of that painted image that had fascinated him for so long, that she actually held his soul in her keeping?
Fustian! But he had to admit that he had been so caught up in her appearance and his own growing passion, that he had never considered any of those odd thoughts clamoring for attention. Even the original wording of the will should have tipped him off. Known to me as Harriet Sharpe. It was a screaming clue that she was someone else.
There was so much that he had never questioned. Melissa knew more of Lanyard Manor than was possible unless she was Harriet. He snorted in disgust. Some student of human nature he was! Harriet would never have revealed that scheme, even to her closest friend. She had been against it from the first, bemoaning what it could do to her reputation. Then there were Melissa’s riding and driving skills. He had more than once compared her to Harriet, though admitting Melissa was better. In fact, she was as good as Harriet would have been after several months around quality horses. And that explained Harper’s comments after they had returned to Berkeley Square that morning.
“Damn, but she’s a good driver,” Charles had said.
Harper had nodded in his ponderously thoughtful way. “Aye. T’lass’s always been a bonny good whip, t’ain’t she?”
The groom had recognized her. He had not been misled by golden curls and amber eyes. His attention had not been riveted by long legs and a bountiful bosom. Sitting up behind, he had watched her hands and the way she handled a whip, and had instantly known who she was.
Was Viscount Rathbone really such a shallow man? Did he become so engrossed in minutiae that he never looked at the whole? Melissa claimed he was ruled by his appetites, and he had to admit she was right. There was no other explanation for his utter lack of intelligent thinking.
He poured another glass of port, wishing he had not spilled all the brandy.
There were other similarities he should have spotted. The wastrel brother, the pet name Missy, Harriet’s inconsistencies. Her knowledge of the Willingford party came from neighborhood gossip – it had been a Drayton tenant who found him that day. No wonder she’d been able back up his story so effectively. She had lived all her life in Lincolnshire. And her social aplomb – she was not a sixteen-year-old farm girl, but an eighteen-year-old aristocrat.
He should have known weeks ago. Melissa’s criticisms of his character and reputation echoed Harriet’s, and both Harriet and Melissa had turned down Heflin. He recalled Harriet’s description of how she had done so, and shuddered. No wonder the man hated her so much. He could never allow the ignominy of it to pass unpunished.
The walls were closing in, suffocating him until spots danced before his eyes. In desperation, he stalked the streets, alternately cursing Melissa and choking back tears. It wasn’t fair! His suffering was too much for one small indiscretion. The penalty was a thousand times worse than the crime.
But thinking grew harder as the hours passed. Images swirled through his mind – Harriet curled on a bed in uncompromising disapproval while he coaxed her aunt into helping him; Melissa passionately pulling him closer, her innocent wantonness driving him to heights he had never before experienced; Lady Lanyard displaying that cat-in-the-creampot smile when he said good-bye so he could join Harriet; Melissa pinned against a tree while Heflin ripped her gown; Swansea suffering from decades of neglect and mismanagement.
And new doubts surfaced. Melissa was not a vindictive person. Despite his passionate longing, he did not merely want her as a bed partner. He admired her intelligence and genuine concern for those less fortunate. She had a firm grasp of reality and such sound judgment that he could follow her suggestions without fear of emulating his father’s flawed decisions.
There must be something he had overlooked, some explanation for this debacle of deceit.
A night of fevered restlessness calmed his anger and forced him to face facts. Despite everything, he loved her. He no longer gave a damn about the money, or his grandmother’s plots, or even Melissa’s possible need for revenge. They must discuss the situation rationally and dispassionately, then put it behind them and get on with their lives.
He arrived at Castleton House almost indecently early, ready to listen calmly to whatever she had to say.
“The ladies are not at home,” intoned Barnes, blocking the door to keep him on the step.
“When will they be back?” he asked.
“I am sorry, my lord, but the ladies will not be home to you again.”
Charles’s hands clenched with the effort to control himself. Every muscle wanted to shove Barnes aside and accost Melissa in her room. The nerve of the wench! Was this part of her revenge? Had her anger still not cooled into reason? Or had she been serious? I despise you!
“Tell her I called,” he rasped at last, handing the butler his card. “If she wishes to see me, she knows where I am.” Turning on his heel, he strode down the street, fury and pain again lashing his mind.
Charles passed the following week in almost continuous drunkenness. He avoided all entertainments, knowing he could not see her without a confrontation that would best be held in private. Not until he lashed out with deadly fists, laying Matt out on the street for commenting on his debauchery, did he begin to pull himself together.
“I’m sorry.” He sighed, helping Matt to his feet.
“You needn’t tell me what happened,” Matt protested, rubbing the jaw that had barely recovered from Heflin’s blow. “But at least do your grieving in private. A gentleman does not wear his heart on his sleeve. Every drawing room in Mayfair is buzzing with speculation.”
“I may as well go back to Swansea,” Charles said. Yet that would admit defeat. His pride despised the idea. “I keep hoping she will relent and at least talk to me.”
“Didn’t you know she was gone?” Matt asked in surprise. “They left for Devon four days ago.”
Charles shuddered, leaning weakly against a post as his knees gave out. Gone? Her hatred must run deeper than he had thought. But why? That was the eternal question. Why? He suddenly realized that he had never explained her initial deception. Harriet had existed before he met her. His first impression at the inn that night had been of a girl running away fro
m home.
“Matt,” he began uncertainly. “There must be more to this problem than I understand. It may have roots in Drayton’s house party. Will you tell me about it?”
Matt paled at the question, leading his friend up to his rooms while he considered how to respond. The agony in Charles’s eyes was hard to endure. “All right,” he finally agreed. “Though that is not a time I care to remember.”
“Who was there?”
“Drayton, of course. The other two were Heflin and Dobson. It was a month of drinking and gaming, with Heflin as the big winner.”
“I know that. He cheated both you and Drayton out of a fortune. What about Dobson?”
“I think he broke even.”
“And Melissa was alone with the four of you?”
“No. She had a cousin chaperoning her, a Mrs. Stokes. We didn’t see them much. Lady Melissa disapproved of the whole affair. Heflin and Dobson were both making plays for the cousin.”
“Good-looking woman?”
“Yes. Middle thirties. Shapely. Widowed American, but straight-laced as they come.”
“Was that her cousin Beatrice?” Charles asked.
“Right.”
So there was a relationship there. He recalled how straight-laced the lady was. Guilt flared over his own attempt to seduce her. Damn! Melissa knew about that, too. And Willingford. And his play for the lower class Harriet. No wonder she ranted on about his character.
“What sent Melissa fleeing to her grandmother’s?”
“I don’t know.” But guilt flashed across his face.
“Matt, I must know. You didn’t try to force her, did you?”
“Certainly not!” he blustered, then abruptly sagged in dejection. “If it were only something that simple. I played the supercilious prig who criticized everything she did. I probably made her life hell. She wasn’t well versed in proper behavior in those days, and Toby wouldn’t lift a finger to help her. Her clothes were abominable, her mannerisms common, and her language belonged in the stable. I even ragged her for biting her nails, though my own behavior was largely to blame. I suppose I was venting my frustrations on her. The more I lost, the snootier I acted. But that’s not the worst of it. My greatest sin was getting so foxed one night that I cascaded all over her.”
“Oh, God,” Charles groaned. Harriet had claimed to despise gentlemen. Could he blame her?
“You know I’ve never had a head for wine,” pleaded Matt. “I was so embarrassed that I quit drinking. I never want to go through that again. It was hard enough having to face her in London this year, but she never said a word, acting as if it hadn’t happened. Her magnanimity is a thousand times better than I deserved. I could not have blamed her for spreading the tale and ruining me.”
“What about the others?”
“Dobson was too busy seducing the servants to pay any attention to Melissa. She wasn’t much to look at. You’d never believe it to see her now, but she could have passed for a London waif. Heflin was making a play for her, though – warm remarks, brushing against her, following her with his eyes – you know the routine. She avoided him whenever possible. After the incident with me, she and her cousin spent the evenings in their rooms. We only saw them at dinner.”
“Heflin is not the type to let that stand in his way,” frowned Charles.
“No, he is not. I don’t know what happened, but the day before she left, he turned up limping. Badly. Spent much of the day in his room.”
Charles was stunned. Melissa was responsible for Heflin’s limp? That stab must have been worse than he thought. She would have known what his reaction must be. No wonder she and Beatrice had left. And that explained Heflin’s attempt to force a betrothal. She had claimed he sought revenge, and she was right. Heflin wanted to wrest payment every day of her life for her temerity.
So where did that leave him?
He did not know. He still had no idea why she had concealed her identity from him.
Charles left for Swansea the next morning. With Melissa gone, there was no reason to remain in town. He was making a spectacle of himself, and it was too expensive. Unless he could talk her into resuming their betrothal, he was destitute.
Was that why he wanted her back? he asked himself several times over the next few days. He reviewed all the arguments he had conducted with himself during the past months, but the answer remained the same. Without her, he was an empty shell. Life had no meaning.
A week after his return he wrote her a letter. She returned it unopened. Pain again attacked him. He tried again. And again. If she wanted to be stubborn, he would be equally stubborn. In the meantime, he threw himself into estate work. If nothing else, it kept his mind occupied during the day and left him exhausted enough to sleep at night. And he sketched her a dozen ways. A hundred. But he was never able to capture that elusive spirit that haunted his dreams.
* * * *
Melissa returned Charles’s latest letter to the footman, closed her bedroom door, and burst into tears. She had cried for eight weeks.
What was she to do? She could not wed a man whose primary concern was money. Yet life without Charles was daunting. She had not realized how much she loved him until he was gone. Nor did she realize how much she needed him.
She had known at Lanyard Manor that he was a dangerous man. He spoke to something within her that she had not wished to recognize. That fear underlay much of her resistance to him. And she had been right to be afraid. What he spoke to was a vulgar emotion that proper ladies were not supposed to feel.
But it was too late. He had awakened wanton desire that now refused to crawl back into hiding and leave her in peace. She had not managed a single night’s rest since that disastrous argument.
Questions kept her mind in turmoil. Did he truly love her? She could not relinquish his calling card, with its declaration scrawled on the back. It stayed with her always, its message now blurred from constant handling.
She had again judged him wrongly. In recalling that disastrous argument, it seemed that he had not known until that very moment that she was Harriet. But his charges continued to echo. Condemning him to a life of poverty … deceitfully denying him a fortune … letting him starve… There had been no attempt to understand her or to discuss anything rationally. He had shouted blame, judging and condemning without allowing her a single word in defense. And her crime was cheating him out of a fortune.
How had she been trapped in this coil? Each step had seemed so reasonable. Most of the lies were small – insignificant explanations that got lost within larger discussions. Many were automatic responses offered in self-preservation. Others were mere silences that allowed misstatements to stand uncorrected. Yet every tiny deceit had wrapped her in a thicker blanket of dishonesty that now threatened to smother her. Scott was right. Oh, what a tangled web we weave…
The beginning was so simple – using an assumed name when she fled from Toby’s plotting. She still did not see how she could have done otherwise. Heflin’s injuries were far worse than she had thought, and his thirst for revenge was stronger. Toby had tried to trace her, giving up only after Heflin left.
But that deceit had led to the larger one – agreeing to help Charles. Again there had been no choice. They had no place to go and no money. Yet she would never have accepted his offer if she had not already been using an assumed name. It endangered her reputation. But it had seemed easy. Who would connect Harriet with Melissa? She would never see him again…
Then there was hiding her identity when Charles first appeared in London. In retrospect, she should have admitted the truth then. It would have saved her from further deceit. Yet he would have immediately claimed her hand so he could inherit the money. They could never have moved past that one point.
There were other lies, of course, all growing from her failure to identify herself. Every time she accidentally revealed something that had happened at Lanyard Manor, she’d had to lie about how she learned the information. Every new lie made it harder to a
dmit the truth. By the time she discovered that Charles had not inherited Lady Lanyard’s fortune, it was too late to admit that she was Harriet. And so she had continued the charade, finally accepting his hand when he convinced her that the money was irrelevant.
Until that last argument. Every charge revolved around money. It was not just important, it was vital. It was central to his existence.
The question returned – had he known her identity before proposing? His acting had always been excellent. She had forgotten his skill at feigning affection, even for the despised Harriet. His rage could have been another pretense meant to punish her for her own deceit, his courtship nothing but another ploy.
Furious and disillusioned, she had barred the door against him and spent a sleepless night tormenting herself with questions. If nothing else, the exercise held the memories of his lovemaking at bay. She had always trusted reason above emotion, but emotion was waging a strong campaign.
Barnes reported Charles’s call, describing his appearance as tortured and handing her his card. On the back was scrawled I love you. She’d spent hours in bitter sobbing, the sodden card clutched tightly in one hand.
“I wish to return home immediately,” she told her grandmother that night. There was no way she could face the ton. Seeing Charles in public would destroy her. He would surely seek her out, for she was the key to his inheritance. Reason could not possibly hold sway face to face.
Lady Castleton had stared at Melissa’s puffy eyes, accepting that the rift would not be resolved any time soon. Her granddaughter had inherited the Tanders stubborn pride. “Very well. But I had hoped you could be happy with Charles. My cousin, Lady Lanyard, believed that you were the perfect wife for him, and her judgment was usually sound.”
“Thank you, Grandmama,” she’d replied, ignoring the comment about Charles. But she could not get it out of her mind. Perfect wife, perfect wife...
Her last meeting with Lady Lanyard echoed through her mind with disturbing new insights. Melissa now realized that her ladyship had already known Harriet’s true identity, and she suddenly understood how. Except for the dress and hair, the eighteen-year-old Lady Lanyard had looked much like Harriet. If Melissa had known of the family relationship, she could have better disguised her appearance and fabricated every part of her story, but she had not. Once the suspicion was raised, it would not take much effort to match the facts Harriet had revealed with Lady Melissa Stapleton’s life.